Venezuela to embalm Chavez

VENEZUELA: Hugo Chavez's political heir said Thursday that the late Venezuelan President and leftist leader would be embalmed “like Lenin” and displayed in the barracks.

As hundreds of thousands of mourners streamed through the military academy where Chavez's body lies in state, officials said Vice President Nicolas Maduro was to be sworn-in as Acting President late Friday and “call for elections.” But as the tense political transition got under way, the farewell to Chavez was also extended, with Maduro saying the public viewing period would last at least seven more days after a state funeral with world leaders on Friday.

Chavez, a former paratrooper whose socialist revolution delighted the poor and infuriated the wealthy, will be embalmed “like Ho Chi Minh, Lenin and Mao” and kept in a glass casket to be seen “for eternity,” Maduro said.

Maduro said the body will be taken to the “Mountain Barracks” in the January 23 slum that was a bastion of Chavez support, a facility that is now being converted into a Museum of the Revolution. It was there that Chavez had spearheaded what proved to be a failed coup against President Carlos Andres Perez on February 4, 1992. His arrest turned him into hero, leading to his first of many election victories in 1998. But Maduro suggested that Chavez may one day be moved elsewhere, a nod to popular pressure for him to be taken to the national pantheon to lie alongside Latin American independence hero Simon Bolivar.

Chavez lay in a half-open, glass-covered casket in the academy's hall, wearing olive green military fatigues, a black tie and the iconic red beret that became a symbol of his 14-year socialist rule.

The government said more than two million people had come since Wednesday to get a glimpse of their hero, whose petrodollar-fueled socialism earned him friends and foes at home and abroad.

Many had stood in line through the night. His closest ally, Cuban President Raul Castro, said his friend Chavez had died “undefeated, invincible, victorious” after “entering through the great door of history.” Castro, Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff, Ecuadoran President Rafael Correa and others went to see the casket and spoke with one of Chavez's daughters as they joined the leaders of several Latin American nations. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Belarussian President Alexander Lukashenko were among 55 Heads of State or Government attending Friday's state funeral.

AFP